theres been a lot of debate about all this. some say you can put your ipod in your dock or whatever anytime you want, and that the battery "doesnt care" what the level's at when charged. others say run it all the way down. my research has lead me to believe that you can pretty much charge whenever you want, otherwise the introduciton of the docking station would be a waste.

I charge my iPod battery every night and rarely lat it drain 100%. I always plugged in my laptop every night and that battery lasted 4 years. I don't expect the iPod to last that long but I think discharging it completely is not very good for the battery. Strain is bad for a battery and I think most of the strain comes from charging (unavoidable) and when the cells are trying to supply as much power as they can when they are low.

Use a lower bit rate, the smaller the song the more songs will fit in the memory buffer, reducing hard disk access.

For comparison - my mini disk player gets 8 hours of play doing normal ( 292 kb/s ) and well over 20 hours on long play ( 66 kb/s ). However, to get the full benefits of the buffer you need to just let the play list do its thing, and not advance tracks or anything like that ( it causes the ipod to spin up its disc to load the track you asked for ).

Use a lower bit rate, the smaller the song the more songs will fit in the memory buffer, reducing hard disk access.

For comparison - my mini disk player gets 8 hours of play doing normal ( 292 kb/s ) and well over 20 hours on long play ( 66 kb/s ). However, to get the full benefits of the buffer you need to just let the play list do its thing, and not advance tracks or anything like that ( it causes the ipod to spin up its disc to load the track you asked for ).